THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI - BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Closing Night Gala

With THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI, writer-director Martin McDonagh (IN BRUGES) has created a genuinely surprising, slow-paced character drama that's also scattered with his trademark dark, filthy humour. But don't be fooled by the trailer that's basically a "best of" some of the funniest bits. This is a much slower, darker and in some senses profound drama that he's created before, and to my mind, all the better for it. 

The starting point of the film is that Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand - FARGO) is angry the local police have not found the man that brutally raped and murdered her daughter Angela. In a fit of frustration and pique, she hires three old billboards outside of the town on a little-used road and puts up a provocative sign asking for justice from police Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson - WOTPOTA). This sets of a series of events that seem to spiral out of control in a tat for tat revenge plot.  It pits Mildred against Willoughby and his stupid racist deputy Dixon (Sam Rockwell - MOON) and Dixon against the poor schmuck who sold Mildred the billboard space (Caleb Landry Jones - TWIN PEAKS) and the town against Mildred.  As her violent ex-husband's hapless young girlfriend points out, violence begets violence. And that's the point when Mildred (and we) realise that the point of the film isn't to find out who did it, and to apportion blame, but to get to a point where we can just let it go.

I loved this film for three reasons. First, as with all McDonagh films, there's a strand of nasty humour that I absolutely adore. Second, McDormand's performance is genuinely award-worthy - not simply for the angry swearing but for the profound pain that underlies it, and invokes our sympathy even as she does selfish, near-unhinged things. Third, I am so rarely surprised by cinema, but this movie totally surprised me three times.  It took characters and events in directions I couldn't have predicted but which made sense and surprised me. I have real respect for authors who can take a character that I initially hate and turn my opinion around and that's what happened here - and it was utterly satisfying. 

So a great film - if deeper and darker and more considered in its pacing than McDonagh's previous work. This may disappoint some fans but I hope they appreciate it for the layered and disturbing but ultimately hopeful work that it is. 

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI has a running time of 115 minutes and is rated R. The movie played Venice, London and Toronto 2017. It opens in the USA on November 10th; in Australia and New Zealand on January 1st; in Italy, Spain and the UK on January 12th; in Argentina, Germany and Singapore on January 25th; in Philippines on February 14th; and in France on February 28th. 

LINCOLN

Steven Spielberg's LINCOLN is a masterpiece, and certainly his best film since JURASSIC PARK, and his only good film that attempts profundity and nuance rather than spectacle.  For that we have to thank a screenplay by Tony winning playwright Tony Kushner ("Angels in America") that never dumbs down the nuanced political considerations of the time; never shies away from tarnishing "Honest Abe" with the reality of political vote-getting; and deftly juggles a vast array of characters  It's a screenplay that understands the deep historical import of its material, but finds time to turn an icon into a real man, not to mention allowing for comic relief. Of course, for that transformation we also have to thank Daniel Day-Lewis, who turns in the kind of tour-de-force charismatic, many-layered performance that we have come to almost take for granted. With a little make-up, a careful study of gait and a beautifully pitched voiced, Day-Lewis clothes himself in crumpled world-weariness and a fondness for the laconic anecdote that hides an inner steel and practicality.  His Lincoln gives politicians of all colours a stern lesson is not letting pride and one's vainglorious boasting about one's moral compass blind one to the necessity of real politics - that is, working with the opposition, working the system, lobbying hard and using patronage where necessary - to get the bill passed.

In this case, the bill is the 13th amendment to the US constitution, forbidding slavery in the US and and all lands subject to its laws.  The film shows that Lincoln cares enough about this great work in its own right but also because he sees the potential legal problems with his Emancipation Proclamation. In public he argues that the bill, by crippling the Southern economy, will hasten the end of the war. But the reality is that the war is already near over, and the South willing to negotiate a peace. The key drama of the film is that Lincoln must put off that peace, as much as he desires it, because he knows that as soon as it is negotiated, he will loose support for his Bill from sections of his own party. Second, he must secure crucial swing votes from the opposition, by means fair and foul.

LINCOLN is, then, a film about politics and the raw, unpleasant reality of doing a deal. There is very little battlefield action, although the horrors of war are never far from his, or our mind.  We see the cost of delaying the Southern delegation of peacemakers (led by Jackie Earle Haley) and the lawyer's equivocation that ultimately gets the bill passed. We also see Lincoln's secretary of state, Seward (David Strathairn) hire three lobbyists cum vote buyers played by John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson and most memorably, a rotund and roguish James Spader.  Spader's down and dirty politics is surpassed only for style by Tommy Lee Jones Republican leader and abolitionist Thaddeus Jones.  He is portrayed as a kind of 19th century Malcolm Tucker, full of colourful insults and sneering bullying of callow young politicians. He provides both light relief and real insight into the art of political compromise, and deserves an Oscar nomination as much as Day-Lewis.

Politics aside, the movie shows us Lincoln as a man who connects with people - who is truly beloved and respected - with his personal touch and colourful stories.  It also shows us Lincoln as the doting father, and frustrated but loving husband.  Sally Field as the grieving, angry, stubborn Mary Todd Lincoln gives a stunning and screen-stealing performance - again Award-worthy.  It is fortuitous for Spielberg that his consistent and typically ill-cast obsession with father-son relationships actually works in LINCOLN.  Our grief at his assassination is not just because a great man has been killed, but because a good father has died. Which brings me to the only weakness of the film.  The movie has a natural and elegant final scene about five minutes before it actually ends, with Lincoln walking away from us and into history.  To my mind, we didn't need to actually see the assassination at all.

LINCOLN is on release in the USA, Canada and Chile. It opens on January 18th in Lebanon, Mexico and Spain; on January 24th in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Russia, Slovenia; on January 25th in Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Sweden, and the UK; on January 31st in France, Denmark, Hungary, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Portugal, Guatemala, Iceland, Norway, Panama and South Africa; on February 7th in Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras,  Nicaragua, Turkey and Uruguay; on February 14th in the Dominican Republic; on February 21st in Hong Kong and Singapore; on April 5th in Venezuela; and on April 19th in Japan.

London Film Fest 2012 - Day 8 - THE SESSIONS

THE SESSIONS is a charming, witty, emotionally affecting movie about a man called Mark O'Brien (John Hawkes) who lived in Northern California in the late 80s.  He contracted polio as a child, and by then in his late 30s, was dependent for life on his iron lung and a series of attendants.  He suffers from muscle wastage and can't use his hands, but has the soul of a poet and superb comic timing. He is also fortunate in his friends - particularly a compassionate priest (William H Macy).  It is a testament to how charming John Hawkes is as O'Brien, that we utterly believe that he could win the love of three women, including the sex therapist (Helen Hunt) who teaches him about his body and how to make love.  It's also testament to this unique and riveting story that the topic never seems prurient, or voyeuristic, or crass.  Rather, director Ben Lewin tackles the issue head-on, with no embarrassment  and utter humanity.

The more I think about this film, the more I admire Helen Hunt for quite literally baring all and bringing integrity and sympathy to a challenging role.  But ultimately, this is John Hawkes' film.  When you consider how he came to our attention as a loveable loser in ME, YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW, and then frightened us as a cult leader in MARTHA, MARCY, MAY, MARLENE. and has now transformed into a admirably self-aware flirt, you just have to stand back and admire John Hawkes range and talent.  Maybe this time he'll get the awards season recognition he deserves?

THE SESSIONS played Sundance where it won the Audience Award - Dramatic, and the Special Jury Prize - Dramatic for the Ensemble Cast. It also played Toronto and London 2012. The film will be released on 19th October in the USA, on 8th November in Australia and New Zealand; on 3rd January in Germany; on 9th January in France, Hong Kong and Spain; on January 17th in the Netherlands, Portugal, Ireland and the UK; on 25th January in Norway; on February 14th in Italy and Brazil; on February 21st in the Czech Republic, Iceland and Sweden; on March 6th in Belgium and Denmark; and on March 28th in Argentina. The running time is 97 minutes.

Guest review by George Ghon - CONTAGION

A ghastly virus breaks out. It kills so fast that any hope to find a suitable remedy in time becomes elusive. A father, whose wife had died, tries to protect his daughter from the evil disease (Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Anna Jacoby-Heron respectively). The government official (Laurence Fishburne) with field experience shows his toughness and rigor to handle the nightmarish situation according to his professional standards. He cooperates with the World Health Organization, which in turn sends a cute epidemy specialist (Marion Cotillard) to analyse the trajectory of the virus and determine where it had come from, ending up on site in Hong Kong. The scientist in the laboratory (Jennifer Ehle) does what she can and all along the viewer waits for an unexpected turn in the plot. 

Is a James Bond villain behind all this? Does the CIA have secret intelligence? Can it be that a Swiss pharmaceuticals CEO has gone insane under the current economic pressure and a little experiment to boost the sales for Aspirin went way out of control? 

No, nothing, the story just continues and the source of the disease is backtracked to an obscure bat population in the Asian jungle. The whole trick box of elaborate Hollywood dramaturgy remains closed, giving preference to a Realistic account of a current-day bio-catastrophe. There is no evil scheme to be discovered. The guys in power are working hard, doing their job as best as they can. The alternative souls (Jude Law as Frisco-based wannabe journalist) are as corrupt and prone to sell their conscience to greedy hedge fund managers as every other human being could possibly be. And even the offices of high profile government organisations, and with them their functionaries, are suspiciously unattractive.

Steven Soderbergh, who wants to see this? Hollywood is the dream factory, not the documentary Mecca! It is easy to dismiss this film as unsuccessful try to wrap an action plot into some layers of the Real. Boring! On the other hand, do we need to see another hyper-stylized, action packed, fast cut, over-dramatized doomsday film? Isn’t Steven Soderbergh here discovering an interesting gap that uses all the tools Hollywood has on display, but does not heighten them to a flasher à la Michael Bay? 

The film is purely led by the prosaic unfolding of a story, which could happen any day, without any conspiracy scheming that goes unnoticed by the public. The lead characters are not immortal (Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise, watch out for Mr. Soderbergh’s casting director, he might eventually get you), nor are they overly beautified (ok, Gwyneth Paltrow looks sexy in a party scene, but no one else would show her deliberately with reddened skin irritations on the neck, I guess) or morally beyond (the people having privileged access to the vaccine that is eventually found gladly take it, without making too much fuss about their ius primae seri). Contagion doesn’t bother too much with aesthetic conventions or viewer’s expectations. It just tells it how it is. Hollywood for the quotidian.

CONTAGION played Venice 2011 and opened in September in Hong Kong, Singapore, Italy and the US. It opened in Hungary on October 13th; and in Finland, Ireland, Poland, Sweden and the UK on October 21st; in Norway on October 28th. It opens in Belgium and France on November 9th; in Spain on November 29th; in Australia on December 3rd and in Germany on December 24th.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 9 - MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE is a movie with a fascinating premise and a compelling central performance that is let down by a deeply non-credible plot and incredibly flawed cinematographer. It arrived at the London Film Festival fêted with praised and awards from the Sundance Film Festival, but sadly does not live up to the hype.


The central premise is to tell the story of a young girl in the immediate aftermath of her escape from a Charlie Manson like cult.  Day by day we see her struggle to adjust to normal society - her behaviour increasingly paranoid and aggressive - her family turning from accepting to irritated.  I really liked the novelty of taking this point of view. Rather than a lurid movie taking us into a cult in simple chronological fashion, it was far more fascinating to see the impact of the emotional manipulation in nightmarish flashbacks.  (That said, and to resist plot spoilers, I will simply say that I found the final scene to be needlessly "tricksy".)


Elizabeth Olsen plays the girl who has escaped - birth name Martha - but renamed by the cult leader Marcy May - a clever re-naming trick designed to alienate her from her former life and family ties.  I guess she'll forever be referred to as the "other" Olsen girl, but this performance should go some way to give her a name of her own.  Her performance is subtle, brave and deeply compelling - it's the backbone that keeps the movie together - and places her as a young talent to watch in the same peer group as Carey Mulligan and Evan Rachel Wood.


The tragedy is that her performance is undermined by a script by debut writer-director Sean Durkin that is utterly (and literally) incredible.  If your kid sister vanishes for two years, then suddenly calls you begging you to pick her up from the middle of nowhere, is in visible distress, covered in bruises, and starts acting really weirdly, wouldn't you ask what just happened?  Wouldn't you take her to a doctor immediately? Wouldn't you try to reach out to her?  I simply found the character of Lucy, Martha's sister, utterly unbelievable, and I wondered if this was deliberate on the part of Durkin or just a mistake, compounded by Sarah Paulin's icy, almost robotic, performance.  But even before that, I found the plot absurd. In the first scene, Martha escapes from the commune by running off into the woods, and then stops in the nearest town for some food.  One of the men from the cult tracks her down and looks menacing, but instead of hauling her ass back, simply let's her hang out in town assuming she'll come back of her own accord.  That just seemed laughably stupid.

Elizabeth Olsen (Martha) on the red carpet
for the UK premiere of  
MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE at 
the BFI London Film Festival 2011

The other major problem with this film is incredibly poor quality cinematography from DP Jody Lee Lipes. That's not to see each frame isn't beautifully composed - that there isn't brilliant work in creating trick shots - reflections.  But I really hate it when people use DV and create colour palettes where the blacks aren't true blacks but washed out greys. It muddies the picture, and reduces the intensity of emotion.  When Martha runs into the woods, for instance, the scene is less petrifying but the scene looks washed out.  


MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE played Sundance 2011 where it won the Directing Award - Dramatic. It also played Cannes, Sydney and Toronto. It opens today in the US. It opens on December 22nd in Sweden; on January 20th in Poland; on February 2nd in Russia; in Ireland and the UK on February 3rd; in Spain on February 24th; and in France and Germany on March 29th.

WINTER'S BONE

WINTER'S BONE arrived in the UK from Sundance and Berlin covered in praise for its strong central performances and gritty portrayal of middle-American rural poverty.

The heroine of the film is seventeen-year old Ree Dolly played with impressive authority and conviction by Jennifer Lawrence. Ree is the daughter of an absent felon father and mentally ill mother, and has been forced to take on the parenting of her younger brother and sister. This involves a delicate balance of learning how to live on scraps and handouts without losing a sense of pride. This fragile existence is put under threat when bail bondsmen threaten to seize Ree’s house and woods unless she can find her father and bring him to jail. One could almost regard the search for the father as a MacGuffin – an excuse for the Ree to take us on a journey into the wider community. Because that’s what this film ultimately is – an excuse to explore a community full of adults that have responded to the lack of economic opportunity in the Ozarks, and turned to drug-using, drug-dealing and violence. Every single adult Ree turns to for help refuses to take the responsibility befitting an adult. And while, to spoil the ending, she does ultimately keep her house – and there is palpable relief that she won’t be separated from her brother and sister – that relief is ultimately false. Because we leave Ree in exactly the same position that we found her in at the start of the movie – living in poverty, forced into maturity before her time, and martyring herself for her family. We’ve basically just seen a young girl literally beaten to a pulp in her fight to stand still – just maintain.

So, WINTER'S BONE is no pleasure-ride, but it is an impressively made and well-acted movie, and that gives a certain pleasure of its own. By persuading the people from Ozarks to let her use their houses, and to appear as extras and minor characters, director Debra Granik imbues her film with a rarely seen sense of authenticity and sympathy. To be crude, even when viewed from the comparative luxury of your art-house cinema seat, this film never feels like poverty-porn. Is the movie flawless? No. I found the black-and-white animated dream sequence gauche and what should have played as a grimly horrific scene on a river was so over-the-top I laughed. Nonetheless, this is a powerful film – a film that creates and sustains a menacing tone, and that contains fleeting glimpses of genuine familial tenderness in the most unforgiving of circumstances.

WINTER'S BONE played Berlin 2010 where it won the CICAE Award and the Reader Jury Prize of hte Tagesspiegel. It also played Sundance 2010 where it won the Grand Jury Prize - Dramatic and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. It was released earlier this year in the US and is currently on release in the UK. It opens in France on November 3rd.